Are You in the PATH Corridor?

Note: Information in this post has been updated.  See the actual PATH corridor filed May 15 by AEP/Allegheny HERE.  Click on the Home link on the top right of this page to see the most recent posts on PATH’s PSC application.

At recent public meetings on PATH, there has been a lot of discussion about whose property the PATH line will cross.  People have been studying power company maps to see exactly where the lines on those maps go.

Be aware that the lines on the power company maps are only very approximate locations for the lines.

I recently looked at Allegheny Energy’s notice in the Morgantown Dominion-Post of its application for a certificate of need for the TrAIL line with the WV PSC.  That map showed a dark line supposed to show the proposed route of the TrAIL line, but there were dotted lines on either side of that dark line marking a ten mile wide corridor within which the power company claimed the line could be located.

What does this mean for you if you live near any of the proposed PATH routes?  It means that if you live within five miles of the lines on the map, you should be preparing to be an intervenor.

The location of the TrAIL line was shifted a number of times, and may yet be shifted again as it is being surveyed.  A change in an angle of the route five or ten miles away could shift the line from your neighbor’s property to yours.  PATH is still just lines on a map.

AEP/Allegheny want us to see only the little black lines on the map.  Instead, we should be seeing each of those lines as being a thick black line ten miles wide.  That’s the way the power companies are looking at it.

Here is a link to the TrAIL map in the Dominion Post notice.